A spectacular Semana Santa (Holy Week) procession in Antigua, Guatemala, is one of many held day and night.

So after years of my wife and I repeatedly telling everyone that we were not "resort people" the time had come to live up to our word and take a real adventure holiday. It's not like we didn't like the idea of staying in resorts, it's just that we always felt we were missing out on the local culture.

Our destination was Guatemala. During our month-long trip we had already backpacked through the Mayan Riviera in Mexico and northern Belize but it was Guatemala that was the constant topic of conversation during our travel preparations. Mexico was easy; the Mayan Rivera had been a tourist destination for decades. Belize was a walk in the park. There was no language barrier as English was the official language and tourists were as common as the cacophony of Bob Marley ringing out from every bus, car, house or structure able to power a stereo. But Guatemala, we didn't even know anybody who had been to Guatemala.

During our travel preparations my wife made the mistake of checking the Canadian and American foreign affairs travel reports. Guatemala sounded like a scene out of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, not the cultural gem that the guide books described it as. The travel reports listed numerous kidnapping, murders and rapes against tourists. They said "Don't go out at night, don't show signs of wealth and whatever you do don't take pictures of the local children." So by the time we rolled across the dusty Belize border into Guatemala we were so worked up with nervous paranoia that we barely noticed the friendly people and beautiful landscape welcoming us.

Our first stop was Flores in the northern state of El Petén. We couldn't believe our eyes, Flores was amazing. The city was perched on a small island in the middle of Lake Petén Itza with a colonial European feel. The following morning we joined a 3 a.m. tour of the Tikal Mayan ruins. This was our fifth visit to a Mayan ruins site in less than a month. Tikal turned out to be by far the most extraordinary. Although it was foggy in the morning we ascended the largest of the temples to watch the sunrise over the ruins. You could hear the eerie call of the howler monkeys and the boisterous conversations between the tropical birds waking up.

Following our visit to Flores and Tikal we proceeded south via a 10-hour non-stop overnight bus to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. A beautiful lake tour and a bout of food poisoning and we were off to the famous Chichicastenango market (ChiChi for short). After bargaining with the locals over a few handicrafts and souvenir T-shirts we proceeded to our final destination, Antigua.

A month and a half before our trip my wife attempted to acquire us accommodation in Antigua. The problem was that we would be visiting Antigua during Holy Week (Semana Santa). During Holy Week Antigua's population swells from 30,000 to over 100,000 to accommodate one of the largest celebrations in Central America. The quaint colonial town transforms into a dramatic festival with huge processions filing through the cobblestone streets at all hours of the day and night. Each procession is an infusion of traditional Mayan and Christian beliefs. The guidebooks recommend booking accommodations four months in advance of Holy Week. We had to locate a room two days before the festival by tromping around town for six hours, begging and pleading with every hostel and hotel manager who would listen. We managed to stitch together four nights in three different hotels/hostels. The next five spiritually charged days we had a front row seat as Antigua's spectacular show unfolded in front of us.

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In the end Guatemala was, in our opinion, the most culturally stimulating, beautiful and exciting country of our journey and, therefore, the most rewarding.